Hurry Down Sunshine

By Sarah Peasley Miller, Special to the Rocky

Published September 18, 2008 at 7 p.m.

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* Nonfiction. By Michael Greenberg. Other Press, $24.95. Grade: A

Book in a nutshell: In this deft memoir, Greenberg describes the summer 12 years ago that his daughter Sally went from poetry-writing, Shakespeare-reading teenager to psych-ward inpatient and back again. He vividly depicts her nearly overnight fall into mania: One thought comes galloping out of her mouth until another overtakes it as she rushes to convey surges of insight. Genius is childhood, she explains earnestly to her stunned father.

Hospitalized immediately at a New York City psychiatric clinic, Sally is given the powerful narcoleptic haloperidol. The doctor tells Greenberg that, left untreated, Sally would have dropped dead from exhaustion.

"They stole my words," she later tells her father, a columnist for the London Times Literary Supplement. Discharged weeks later with a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, Sally's powerful medications leave her feeling "like I'm packed in foam rubber," but combined with ongoing visits with a skilled psychiatrist, they allow her to return to school for 10th grade.

If Sally's story is the meat and potatoes of this book, Greenberg's reflections are the spice. His feelings are erratic as he becomes "intoxicated with Sally's madness in both senses of the word: inebriated and poisoned." He considers James Joyce's twisted relationship with his own mentally ill daughter and makes shocking admissions of his strained marriage.

Best tidbit: Once Sally returns home, Greenberg lives in a state of anxiety as she bounces between lethargy and ornate fantastical plans. "Unable to bear waiting any longer for Sally to get out from under her pitiless ball of fire, I try to see the world as she does, and swallow a full dose of her medication." Blocking the dopamine in his healthy brain is, of course, different from blocking it in Sally's, but he's overcome by indifference and understands what it's like for Sally to be barred from "being fully alive in the world."

Pros: A bevy of well-drawn characters flit around the surreal story, including Sally's homeopathy-dispensing mother and the author's mentally ill brother, Steve, "a shoteh, as the Talmud would call him, a mental invalid, the responsibility of his tribe." Greenberg's smooth storytelling makes a difficult subject palatable.

Cons: He pares the story down so well that we're left with many unanswered questions: How did friends react once he finally admitted his daughter's illness? How did he cope with finances, since he was uninsured when Sally fell ill?

Final word: This quiet, unassuming book carries a wallop with fine writing and satisfying insights.

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